Macau, a very different place from Las Vegas

In a time when Macau is being more and more talked about in the United States, due to the investments made by the big names from Las Vegas entertainment industry, the Los Angeles Times thought it was time to write a big report about the city. “I confess I didn’t know what I was going to find in Macau, if it would be something similar to the Las Vegas Strip (a cluster of hotel-resorts and casinos along a big avenue), in the way that the casinos are integrated in the landscape of the city, or something different”, tells Beverly Beyette, the journalist sent to Macau by the daily newspaper. After five days discovering what Macau has to offer and tell, Beverly Beyette takes now back to California the mission to show to the readers that Macau is much more than what it as been putting it on the headlines – the gaming industry – and it offers a very different experience from that of the city built in the middle of the Nevada desert. “All that Las Vegas has for the visitors is basically the Strip. Almost all of the tourists that go to Las Vegas stay in the Strip and don’t leave the Strip. They go there only to have fun, go to the casino and watch the shows”, she points out. Whereas in Macau, outside of the hotels and resorts, Beverly Beyette found a very interesting place to visit, were she could feel the history of the old harbor-city co-habited by Portuguese and Chinese for more than 400 years, which legacy - the Historic Centre of Macau – was listed by UNESCO last year. The reporter believes that, in the future, the curiosity of US tourists about Macau will only grow, attracted by the investments of the big Las Vegas hotels, such as Wynn, Sands and MGM, which are very well know among the Americans. “I believe that more and more Americans will come to Macau to see what is going on here”, declares Beverly Beyette, who will write an article about Macau to be the main story of the special travel section published on Sundays by the Los Angeles Times, with a circulation of 1,3 million issues. The United States, were Macau Government Tourist Office DST has representative offices in California and New York, is currently the eight biggest visitor market for Macau. Between January and July of 2006, more than 78 thousand tourists from the US visited Macau, representing a 15 per cent growth over the same period last year.